Earlier this month, Prime Minister David Cameron announced that he planned to halve the period of time European migrants can claim jobseekers allowance and other key benefits for a maximum of three months. There is much debate as to whether there is enough focus on the significant contribution migrants bring to the UK. Multiple reports published have revealed statistics of migrants coming to the UK to work and help economic growth. We have done multiple articles showing this.
NHS Reliance on Foreign Nationals & UK Employers believe they Work Harder
Migrants have proven to make a significant contribution to the UK economy in multiple areas of the work sector. For instance, statistics released from the Health and Social Care Information Centre (HSCIC) revealed that more than 1 in 10 workers are from overseas, including 25% of doctors and 11% of nurses. Figures obtained by The Guardian show that the NHS employs staff from more than 200 different countries, including Azerbaijan, Zambia, Indonesia, Poland, and American Samoa, according to official figures. The biggest supplier of employees is India with 18,424, followed by the Philippines with 12,744, then Ireland with 12,613 and Poland with 5,507.
These figures have led the British Medical Association (BMA) to observe that without the contribution of non-British staff, “many NHS services would struggle to provide effective care to their patients”.
A spokeswoman for the British Medical Association stated:
“Overseas doctors have for many years made a valuable and important contribution to the NHS, especially in key services where there has been a historic shortage of UK-trained doctors. For many years the NHS actively encouraged overseas doctors to move to the UK, many of whom committed to a life here and have since become British citizens.”
It not only the NHS that feels the benefits from migrants. Recent research by the National Institute for Economic and Social Research (NIESR) has revealed that UK businesses prefer to recruit international workers as they already have the skills needed to contribute to their businesses. According to one of the researchers, employing outside the UK has allowed UK employers to fill skilled and specialist roles and enabled some organisations to expand.
Migrants help fill gaps that UK Natives are unable to fill
The changes in the patterns of migration in the UK over the last 20 years has been heavily down to the changes to UK immigration policies. Other domestic policies play a part too. These include education and training policy. UK born employees in high skilled work has increased by 2 million, in comparison to the 1.1 million decline in UK born employment in low skilled work. Migrant employment increased by 1.1 million in low skilled work and increased by 1.3 million in high skilled work.
As part of the new restrictions, David Cameron announced plans to halve the period of time European migrants can claim jobseekers allowance and other key benefits for a maximum of three months. This is in order to attract migrants to the UK for the right reasons, it is also a warning to those who are in the UK illegally.
According to the Department for Work and Pensions, the number of EU migrants claiming Jobseekers Allowance (JSA) from outside the UK at the time when they applied for their National Insurance card is 5.8%. EU officials have retaliated by saying there is no evidence to show that migrants come to the UK to claim benefits.
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